  Goffmania |
Saturday, March 30, 2002
The Porcupine: A Pilgrimage to Popper
by Adam Gopnik I've written before about my affinity for Karl Popper. He has asked the same sorts of questions that I want to ask; I guess I'm an unwitting descendent of his ideas. But I have nothing on Adam Gopnik, whose devotion to Popper so immeasurably exceeds my own that it led him to make a pilgrimage to Popper's home in England. He recounts the episode and discusses Popper's legacy in this week's New Yorker "Even Bryan Magee, his most articulate popularizer, wrote, in a memoir, that 'everything we argued about he pursued relentlessly, beyond the limits of acceptable aggression in conversation. . . . He seemed unable to accept the continued existence of different points of view, but went on and on and on about them with a kind of unforgivingness until the dissenter, so to speak, put his signature to a confession that he was wrong and Popper was right.'" |  |
RECENT MUST-READS: To Our Readers film prof Ray Carney plushie/furry subculture - - - - - Goffmania is a weblog dedicated to the influential American social psychologist Erving Goffman. Who's responsible? Neel is a college student in eastern Pennsylvania. Jason is a writer in the Midwest. Sue has driven a school bus in Wisconsin for 34 years. Goffman links: Excerpts from The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Article: Celebrating Erving Goffman - - - - - Goffman Biography A sociologist well-known for his analyses of human interaction, Erving Goffman relied less on formal scientific method than on observation to explain contemporary life. He wrote on subjects ranging from the way people behave in public to the different "forms" of talk, and always from the point of view that every facet of human behavior is "significant in the strategy and tactics of social struggle, " a Times Literary Supplement critic says. Roy Harris, in another Times Literary Supplement review, calls Goffman "a public private-eye. . . forever on the lookout for candid-camera evidence which might lead to divorce proceedings between ourselves and our social images." NEEL'S DAILY: Follow Me Here Arts & Letters Daily wood s lot simcoe JASON'S DAILY: Slate Romenesko McSweeney's Pitchfork SUE'S DAILY: Gotham Gazette Tom Tomorrow Media Whores Online |
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